3 comments:

I explained in my comment that I had concerns about the length of web series in general and this series in particular. The length of the videos was mentioned by Logan in the post with the claim that it was a chopped up movie. This series is on YOUR network and hence that opened up the discussion of view numbers. If the show is getting major views then clearly my concerns are unfounded.

As to your honesty no one is questioning that. What we are saying is that EVERY ONES numbers need to be independently verified and transparent if you want the media and the community to take them seriously. This is not about your character or your honesty so please do not make this personal. This is about verification which has been call for by many prominent web series people in the community. If you read Shannon Millers "5 questions with..." it is one of the common concerns raised.

We need to better understand the numbers for all series. We need to understand when a front page autoplay has been used. We need to understand how often a video received a full view. Only when these numbers have been fully audited by an independent body will we have done our due diligence.

I am impressed by several of the shows on Koldcast and it would really be nice to put this discussion behind us. By providing independent verification Koldcast has the opportunity to show a good example as hopefully you build towards a successful network. Show Sony how it should be done (they tried to pass off "verified" autoplay numbers as real views for Bannen Way as reported by Newteevee).

In August Koldcast had approximately 200k unique visits. Of those almost 180k went to "blog.koldcast.tv" which as you know is your blog site. Now clearly you have better internal statistics on how traffic navigates your site, but this observation alone needs to be aligned with the view numbers being claimed by various series on your network

I fully appreciate that you are a private company and have every right to make your own decisions. However this is an issue that is not going to go away so there are responsibilities to the community that you might do well to factor into your decision making on this topic.

"With all due respect, KCTV has no “responsibilities” toward the community. They have responsibilities to their investors. That’s it."

There is such a thing as "stakeholders" for any "corporation" (private or public). Koldcast is a "corporation" protected from liability by the legal framework created by the government. That means they are responsible to the "public". Companies and industries that do not act responsibly in terms of the needs of the "public" end up being regulated by the government.

I dare you to tell ANY venture capitalist what you just said. I can assure you that it would not end well. Any company that does not heed the needs of its customers or the community at large is not going to last long in this world.

Logan, you are the one who raised the question of length which is where this discussion began. That discussion is intimately tied to the broader discussion that is going on in the community and from all I have read the community has expectations on how companies like Koldcast should handle the view count issue.

But in the context of this post how can we intelligently discuss the impact of length if we have no idea what the impact is on view count? That is why verifiable view count numbers are so important to so many people in the space.

There do seem to be two camps Rebecca. One likes shorter (less than 3 min) and one likes longer. So, I respect that we all have different tasted/needs when it comes to web series. However if you go with short the people who want longer will probably still watch it if the show is good. If you go for long, well people tend to click away from videos at the 3 min mark. This is where digging into the analytics a bit could help us all understand the form/function questions of web series design.

The problem is that a lot of web series go for long before they have built out their audience. Is it not smarter to build out your audience using a format that has the widest appeal and then slowly feel out your audience as to what works for them and what does not?

I have actually been watching this particular show and guess what….. in the last episode I clicked away at around 3.30. Time is limited. Perhaps if the show delivered more then they could hold me longer. I will probably watch longer episodes of High School with Money for example because it has a clever format and is really well written.